Re: Octave Forge website / third sentence on the "Home" page

[Julien Bect]

Le 09/08/2014 17:03, PhilipNienhuis a écrit :
> Julien Bect wrote
> > > Hello all,
> > >
> > > Just a tiny suggestion concerning the Octave Forge website... I would
> > > remove the third sentence on the "Home" page :
> > >
> > > "In general the packages are designed to work with the latest
> > > development version of Octave, but it should be possible to use most
> > > packages with earlier versions."
> > >
> > > Indeed,
> > >
> > > 1) the first part is a little scary. It suggests (to me) that some
> > > packages might actually depend on features provided by unreleased
> > > versions of Octave... Is it really something that the Octave Forge
> > > maintainers would consider doing ? Not all users want to use development
> > > versions.
> The windows package cannot even be installed in Octave-4.1.0+ as octave-map
> stuff has been removed (IIRC that is what the error messages suggest).
> I need to install it in 3.9.0+ and then the installed windows package works
> OK in 4.1.0+ as well. So in a way what's currently on the OF site is
> somewhat true, but....

According to its DESCRIPTION, the "windows" package should work for 
Octave >= 3.2.0. If it doesn't work in Octave 3.6.4 or 3.8.1 (does it ?) 
then I would say that the package is broken... If it doesn't work in 
Octave 3.8.2-RC2, 3.9.0+ or 4.1.0+, then it's not broken yet (but is 
likely to become broken sooner or later :).

> It would be better to say that OF packages are supposed to work with the
> latest *stable* version of Octave.

I essentially agree, although I don't think the word "stable" is used on 
the Octave website. I suggest : "The packages are designed to work with 
the latest release of Octave, but it is usually possible to use them 
with earlier versions (see 'Dependencies' in the detailed description of 
the package)."

Instead of "latest release", the Packages page uses "current version". I 
don't know what's best.

@++
Julien